BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION JAN. 11-13, 2019) — Before we open up to open comments, allow THE PLANET to share a few random observations.

It’s Not My Fault, Mommy! — To say that Mayor Tyer came to office inheriting the problems of her predecessor — to say that about any leader, actually — provides nothing more than an excuse for poor performance, under performance, or outright failure. When a newbie runs for office, he or she does so with this understanding. Tyer’s no different from Bianchi, Ruberto, Hathaway, Doyle … go back as far as you want. The job of the successor is to move the city forward. Has Tyer done this? Is it a flower or a weed? That’s always a judgment call.

Houston, We Have a ‘No Problem’ — Have you noticed how young people never say “You’re welcome?” after receiving your thanks. Invariably, they answer “No problem.” The subtle difference speaks much, as any linguist, philologist, or lover of language can confirm. “You’re welcome” conveys the warmth of appreciation and “a human touch.” Contrarily, “no problem” conveys selfishness and solipsism. It says, “Hey, this could have been a problem, but I’m so great that I have decided not to make it a problem.” Reminds me of Orwell’s dire warning about the decline of the English language from the late 1940s. Also of the quote by T.S. Eliot in the coda that concludes each of our columns.

Robbin’ Roberts — Did council president Peter Marchetti violate Roberts’ Rules of Order when he quashed a councilor’s question? At the most recent council meeting, Ward 4 councilor Chris Connell asked a question of Craig Gaetani, who was sitting in the pews. As Gaetani came to the mic to respond, Marchetti made a motion to close the meeting, seconded by at-large’s Peter White — Pete and repeat, in the immortal phrase of one of THE PLANET‘s wags. Roberts allows members of the dais to pose queries of anyone in the room and permits the person to answer. The wishy-washy Marchetti showed his weakness in the ruling, also a disdain for his own rules to say nothing of free speech. This is the type of limp “leadership” that has held the city back for far too long.

Long Division — This weekend is the favorite of many NFL fans. The divisional matchups offer two games Saturday and two on Sunday. Winners advance to the conference finals. Losers go home. The only Northeast team left? The dynastic New England Patriots, whose unparalleled run of success has installed an impossibly high standard: Super Bowl or bust. How many other teams in the league would love to have won their 10th straight divisional title, appeared in the past eight conference championships, and played in three out of the past four Super Bowls winning two of them? Some “bad” year! Of course, the Red Sox winning the World Series gives Boston the most recently contested world title of the four majors. With all the winning, Boston fans are forever playing with house money!

Drinks on Us — People hear what they want to hear and do the same with their understandings. When we offer intelligent critiques of social, political, and cultural conditions, some like to blast us for finding fault. However, in our previous column, we offered seven qualities shared by healthy cities — seven specific solutions for moving forward. Few, if any, commented on the positivity. They rarely do when we offers solutions. The glass is never half empty or half full as long as someone is drinking.

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212 Responses to “BRIC-A-BRAC ON A DIVISIONAL WEEKEND”

This has already been addressed. As much as you despise Walmart because you probably are able to shop elsewhere, many low and middle income people find Walmart to be a lifeline. Walmart supposedly made the decision not to come to Pittsfield; that is unless you know something that we don’t know about the Pittsfield City Council’s actions regarding a Super Walmart coming to Pittsfield. Please do tell.

Pat Muraca’s sentence belies his past status as Dan Bianchi’s, Corey Thurston’s, Tricia Farley Bouvier’s, and the rest of the political cult’s poster child as the economic engine for positive business development and job creation.

And the one thing these folk had in common was that they all managed to hit the “Pittsfield Stride”. And in order to hit the “Pittsfield Stride” you need to be connected to the “Pittsfield Good Old Boy Group”.

and for verification of that axiom ask the mayor or other political climber how to get your foot in the door…elsewise you may wind up being a door mat.

There’s at least two now who have done time Armitage and Muraca. That’s what happens when elected officials don’t want to do the heavy lifting. They could have and should have verified the credentials of these individuals .
Charlatans and hustlers are the only people who come to town tell everyone how great they are can cure cancer etc. If you just invest in my miracle machine. No evidence of it working anywhere else. Immediately proclaim it is way to sophisticated for mere mortals like citizens to understand. Make up a few aliases who you can use to swear by any claim that you state Throw in a few buzzwords over inflate your past never produce proper documentation and pretty soon you have a fistful of taxpayers monies
Sound familiar?

Either they did not want to do the heavy lifting or they were in on it.
Did anyone do the heavy lifting with the Beacon? Apparently not…or perhaps they knew and helped structure the thing….how often can shit like this happen and city officials NOT KNOW ANYTHING?

JOE
It sounds SOOO familiar that I’d it’s Siamese Twins. “Verified credentials?” That only happens in Pittsfield is you are an honest bloke, are willing to play by the rules, use your own money or private equity, and don’t “Know Anyone.” Then they “verify” you right out of business.

This is why we need a border wall. Fentanyl from Mexico coming over the border kills one and potentially turns 12 people into addicts. Once these dangerous drugs hit the streets, the body count rises and the addiction epidemic spreads. Sometimes these drugs are put into drinks by devious people or they are mixed with other drugs that young people think are not dangerous.

If we only had a border wall the drug kingpins, even with all their sophisticated methods, like drones or tunnels or trailer trucks passing through ports of entry, or coming over the Canadian border or on any of the 5 thousand jets that land in America every month, we would be drug free.

I am pretty sure wall cure cancer as well so what in the hell are we stalling for? jeepers

Gosh you’re right. So lets not do anything and hope for the best. Right?!? Seems to me that the Dems were declaring a drug epidemic in the country just this summer, but now that it’s been connected to the border, they are saying “Nothing to See Here Folks. Move Along” and we have liberal news reporters filing their nails and yawning when anyone dares to say we have a crisis at the border. It’s hypocrisy.

Trumped UP,
I am not sure where he will be serving the time. All I have read thus far is he has been sentenced and is due to show up at wherever in April. I will learn more later this week and if it hasn’t been posted by then I will let you know.

If it is not in the Eagle it did not happen. Also, it is not good to talk about all the Pittsfield shootings because it may hurt the tourism economic engine and make the mayor look bad. Please try to take a more positive position and talk about apple blossoms next time.

Since everyone has so many concrete solutions to Pittsfield’s ills – perhaps one or more should toss their hats into the upcoming mayoral contest. I didn’t think so; it’s much easier to hide behind someone else’s identity than to stick it all out there . . .

The next pseudonym that claims they can do a better job than Mayor Tyer, I think I’ll . . . . well, we’ll leave it at that!!

Dan, you seem to have Pittsfield political pulse rightly calibrated, might you consider a bid for mayor?

And if you think for one moment Melissa Mason Mazzeo is any threat to Linda Tyer, you’re foolin’ yourselves. Once Tyer’s re-election it’ll be time to oust Tommy Bowler from his office. My advice to Bowler, retire at the end of your current term – while you still have a shred of dignity.

Remember the days when the ‘network’ occupied the three axes of power, i.e., Sheriff’s office, DA’s office, and Mayor’s office)? Now they’re down to one – sheriff’s office.

In a year or so, TFB will announce her candidacy for sheriff; and chances are she will prevail in a general election. Just ask Tyer and Harrington how generous voters were during their general election victories!!

Right wing Christion believe Trump was sent by God to save America by making the rich more wealthy and the powerful more powerful.Keep minorities in their place and stop the flow of the poor through our southern border with a updated Wall from China.What Trump voter on the board believes God sent Trump……Many will come in his name

In the end Trump is just the goodies guy in America.Let face facts,he tweets when he sits on his toilet in the morning.Its really funny stuff.People love the Trumpster.A real life cartoon sent to save America

So we need to build a wall that won’t make a bit of difference to save our addicts but we won’t adequately fund treatment, public health mitigation, or incarcerated rehab. All of these will actually save lives.

The best way to stop the drug traffic is before the drugs come into this country. Well how do you do that you ask. Simple. Very simple. Extremely simple.

You offer the drug cartel twice the going price for a bag of cocaine or a dram of fentanyl. In other words you buy out their supply and then buy their poppy fields and labs. It would be like a corporate takeover and sure very costly, but it would be a one time expenditure.

You are welcome Pat. Maybe now we can stop talking about the Goddamn wall and open the government so it can continue to screw up other things instead.

Had lunch with the Gman today. He brought up many good points. He asked how could the consultants have overestimated the sewer project by 13 million dollars?? He always said the project was way way over priced and he was correct. Of more importance he has always also stated that the consultants fees are always based on total project cost. He has mentioned this to the council countless times. He will ask the CC at the next meeting whether the consultants will charge their % on 74 million or the new figure of 61.4 million??. He states the consultants probably have theirs already and the question will be do they plan to back credit part of the fees they have already taken. The Gman has been spot on with this sewer project and states the city made a grave mistake going with ballasted flocculation. He states that the BF technology is very limited and when the EPA comes in with new standard to be met in the future the city will have to spend and spend to meet them. He states that ozonator technology is far superior and can meet just about any standard the EPA can throw at it in the future. He feels very confidant about this because today the ozonator treats all the contaminants in framing water which is the most polluted water seen in the industry. The Gman says the city is being plucked clean by the consultants because there is no fire wall between the city and the consultants. The city’s so called fire wall is tutocy and that’s like no fire wall at all. Coupled with tyer and 8 miscreants on the council and that recipe equals a blood bath for the rate payer. The Wiz did his job very well but when you are dealing with a wall! Of incompetence you can only go so far. I asked him if he may run for mayor. He pondered and stated. For city Manager quite possibly. I asked again about mayor. He just smiled. Mayor or manager the Gman would be an incredible step upward for all city residents. He said there are others more qualified than him who should run but they are embarrassed to be beaten by nobodies like tyer. The Gman ended by saying ‘ I need a vacation’ He said anyone can take that any way they want.

HTP Look at your post. Seller sounds (to) much like you. Of course it does it is me. Art Seller. Where do you wackos come from. What’s important is content. Ever heard of that???? Sad so very sad. You and others like you killed the rate payers. If you stood up for yourself you would not be seeing the huge rates that are coming your way soon. Remember one thing. Gaetani tried to save you but you and others sunk yourself. Now try to figure out what I just said.

There is 1/2 million square feet of high schools serving 1600 9 thru 12s.Yon and McCandless lose 500 student a year to other buildings teaching the same boring stuff.So the answer according to yon is stay on this course.School choice ruined the schools by stealing our money.If I hear McCandless does a great job from yon again I’m going to ask what school system are they looking at.The City Council oversee a bloated school budget that changes names of programs and calls it new.What is the new teacher position called deportment…I guarantee Yon has no clue….Its the old in-house position and that does not work.

TSC I get what you are trying to say. You are correct. The system is a total failure and they put on a new shade of lipstick and call it new lips. I think your figure of 500 students lost per year is very high but should be that amount because the quality of their product gets worse each year. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the state take over the pittsfield schools and for that matter BCC because what is runing that place is wall to wall gobsigs also. The only people who are never heard from in this are the ones who pay all the bills. In a sense they are responsible for all that is wrong in pittsfield. When the gobsigs see they have no critics the become emboldened and the leadership gets lower and lower in quality until we reach the point we are now. OPEB is approaching 467 million and counting. Perhaps the best thing that could happen is for the city to go bankrupt. That way we could reset the counter. It couldn’t be any worse than what we have today.

Lounge and Honduran. Go back and read my post. I told you to bet the other and that I would win either way. You are not paying attention. I made a fortune. One day you will learn to bet with spreads but you haven’t graduated from kindergarten yet and probably never will. Bet on tyer runing again but wining??? Well that’s another story. Wining has many definitions. I will leave you to figure this out.